As soon as he’s gone, Ulrika yanks her dagger out of her armrest and tucks it back into her belt. She stands up. “I’m going to check up on Kieran.”
Lucinda follows her without asking for permission, leaving me and Theora alone in the dark, cluttered room. A grandfather clock ticks loudly in the corner of the room. I’m suddenly aware how closely we’re sitting together on the sofa; there are just a few purple stripes between us. Theora shifts and her knee touches mine. I swallow, unable to focus on anything but that one inch of skin where our legs are pressed together. I lift my eyes and hold her gaze. Blood rushes into her cheeks and she looks away, but a faint smile flitters over her lips. There’s an awkward pause as neither of us knows what to say.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she finally says, standing up.
Outside, the Lupines are still busy cleaning up the mess made by the earthquake, so they don’t pay us any attention as we stroll through the village. We pass a house covered entirely in wisteria and Theora brushes her hand over the violet flowers, releasing their sharp honey scent. An old woman with a long gray mane is standing on the front porch, picking up fragments of broken potted plants. Scattered around her feet are hundreds of orchid petals.
“Oh no,” Theora says, her lips turning down. “Those were Hettie’s pride and joy. She must be devastated.”
She hurries up the porch steps while I wait at the bottom, uncertain whether I should join her or not. I watch as Theora quietly offers words of comfort to the old woman. Looking at her now, it strikes me how much she reminds me of Catherine. They both have kind hearts. Theora didn’t have to bring me back here; she could have easily left me in the woods, with nowhere to go. But instead she’s helping me and Lucinda, despite what we are. The old lady dabs her eyes and smiles at Theora. They briefly hug, and then Theora joins me again. We continue our walk through the village.
“Where are we going?” I ask as we approach the outskirts.
Theora grins. “Are you afraid of heights?”
“No,” I say, getting a bad feeling.
She gestures for me to follow her up a flight of stone steps that are carved into the mountainside. We climb the steps for several minutes, walking side by side, despite there not really being enough space for the two of us. Occasionally the backs of our hands brush against each other and my stomach swirls, like I’m going to be sick, but not in a bad way. I desperately want to lace my fingers through hers, but that’s insane! I don’t even know this girl, yet every part of me is aching to touch her.
I’m out of breath by the time we reach the top of the steps, but Theora’s hardly broken a sweat. We’re on a rocky outcrop several hundred feet above the Lupine village. Up here, the air is much thinner and I feel dizzy, although that might just be because I’m standing close to Theora. The sky overhead is cloudy and gray, and there’s a weird eggy smell in the air like there was at the waterfall where we’d set up camp earlier. It’s a little disconcerting, especially after the earthquake, but nobody seems that worried about it, other than me. Maybe it’s normal; I don’t know. Until today, I’d never ventured outside the walls of Amber Hills, so perhaps the air up here always smells like this? It’s crazy to think how much has happened since then: I’ve met Theora, gotten a heartbeat and now I’m a wanted man.
“This is what I wanted to show you,” Theora says, gesturing toward a circular building on the edge of the precipice. The building has no walls; it’s just a domed roof held up by several marble columns. “This is our temple.”
“Oh,” I say, still trying to catch my breath from the hike. “Pretty.”
Theora laughs slightly as we enter the temple. From here, we can see right across the Forest of Shadows. In the far distance, I can see the Boundary Wall surrounding Amber Hills.
“You can see where I live from here.” I point toward the spire of my grandfather’s church, which pokes above the wall. Grief suddenly rips through me as I realize that I can never go back there. I’m homeless. Instinctively, I clasp the circle pendant around my neck. It always gives me comfort when I’m feeling lost or frightened.
“What is that?” Theora asks, pointing to my pendant.
“It’s the symbol of my faith,” I say. “Everyone in Amber Hills follows the Purity.”
“The Purity?”
“We believe that the Darklings are demons sent from hell to corrupt our souls.” I attempt a smile, but it quickly fades on my lips.
Theora looks at me, a small crease between her white brows. “You believe that, despite what you are?”
“Especially because of what I am,” I say. “My faith keeps me pure. It helps me control my urges so I don’t hurt people. It works.” I imagine the sound of Catherine’s neck snapping. “Well, most of the time.”
Theora frowns. “I couldn’t imagine living like that. Having to hide what I am, for fear of being killed.” She takes my hand and my heart stutters. “You must have been very lonely.”
She releases my hand and lies down on the marble floor, patting the ground beside her. I lie down. The stone is icy cold against my back, but I don’t want to miss this opportunity to be next to Theora. We’re lying so close together, my left arm is pressing up against her right one, but she doesn’t make any attempt to move hers away. I smile and face the ceiling. The domed roof has been painted like the night sky, with pearls embedded into it to replicate stars. In the center of the roof is a hole, so you can see the actual sky.
“My people . . . our people,” she corrects, “worship the goddess Luna. And every month, at the full moon, you can see her face perfectly through that hole.” Theora tilts her head toward me. Our eyes lock and I get that jittery feeling in my stomach again. Up close, I realize her eyes aren’t silver but steel-gray with these tiny metallic flecks in them, like the tinsel we use during Winterfest. “This is my favorite place in the whole world,” she whispers.
“Thank you for sharing it with me.”
She smiles faintly. “I thought you’d like to know a little bit about your heritage.” Her smile fades and she’s quiet for a while.
“What are you thinking about?” I ask her.
“Icarus,” she says. “You do know when you bring Annora back to him tonight, he’s going to expect you to leave with him?”
“I know. But I don’t have a choice,” I say. “The longer he’s here, the more danger the Lupines and people of Amber Hills are in. I can’t have any more blood on my hands.” I think of Mrs. Hope and Naomi.
We fall into a long silence as we just gaze at each other. Her eyes drift over the old burn marks on my cheeks, along the wide line of my mouth, up my narrow nose, back to my eyes.
“What happened?” she says. I know she’s referring to the burns.
“My mom dropped me into a tub of scalding water,” I say. “Do my scars bother you?”
She shakes her head.
I prop myself up onto my left elbow. “Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask. “I mean, I’m a Darkling and my father killed your parents. You should hate me. I hate me.”
“You can’t condemn an entire species of people because of the actions of one man.” My pulse quickens as she places her hand on my chest. “It’s easy to hate, Edmund. The true test of our hearts is to forgive.” She frowns slightly. “Why do you dislike yourself so much?”
I roll onto my back. “Because I’m a freak. Until we met, I didn’t even have a heartbeat.”
Her eyes widen. “What?”
“Something happened to me back in the forest,” I blurt out. “I was cursed without a heartbeat when I was born—it’s just what happens when a Darkling and human mate—but when we touched, my heart activated. I don’t know what it means, but it’s amazing and brilliant and terrifying, because I have these feelings for you, Theora,” I continue. “It’s like, I feel connected to you, like we’re meant to be together, which I know is insane, as we’ve just met, and I don’t even understand it, and fragg, please say something! Tell me you felt something too,” I gasp for breath. I’ve never strung so many sentences together all at once.
She looks away.
I sit up. “You felt something, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” she finally says. She sits up and looks at me. “Before I saw you in the woods, I felt this . . . this tugging . . . in my chest. It was really strange. Then when you fell on me after the earthquake, I . . .”
“What?” I say excitedly.
A tiny crease furrows between her brows. “I felt a sharp pain in my heart. I thought it was just from the shock of you landing on me, but now . . .” She sighs. “I don’t know what’s going on, Edmund. Something obviously happened back in the woods, but I don’t feel ‘connected’ to you in the way you described. I think you’re attractive, but it’s not because of”—she gestures toward my chest—“whatever this is you’re experiencing.”
“You think I’m attractive?” I say, grinning slightly.
She blushes. “You really didn’t have a heartbeat until we touched?”
“Really,” I say.
“Have you ever heard of this happening before?”
I shake my head. “But I’ve never met a Darkling before today, so I don’t know what’s considered normal behavior for our kind and what’s not,” I admit.
She stands up. “Well, let’s go ask someone who might know.”
20.
EDMUND
WE FIND LUCINDA at Alaric’s house, sitting beside Kieran on the wooden bed. He’s propped up by several pillows, a hand-sewn quilt pulled up to his slim waist. He’s not wearing a top, so I can see the gash on the side of his body, which has been patched up with a few stitches and a foul-smelling ointment. He’s pale but seems to be okay. He’s certainly enjoying Lucinda dabbing his forehead with a damp cloth, given the grin on his lips.
Ulrika’s sitting on a blue chair in the corner of the room. She’s gazing out the window, her body language stiff, like she’d rather be anywhere but here, babysitting her cousin and his Darkling friend. She scratches her fingers through her short, tangled hair. She turns her head as we enter the room. Her eyes immediately dart down to our locked hands.
“What’s going on, Theo?” Ulrika says.
“Um, we need to talk to Lucinda,” Theora says. The Darkling girl glances up at us. “Something a little weird has happened. Edmund’s got a heartbeat, and he didn’t have one before.”
I briefly explain what happened. Ulrika’s and Kieran’s eyes widen with surprise, while Lucinda just nods as she listens.
“Do you know what’s going on with me?” I say.
“Yeah. Theora’s your Blood Mate,” Lucinda says.
“My blood what?” I say.
“Blood Mate,” Lucinda repeats slowly, like I’m stupid. “When a Darkling meets their true love, their dual heart activates. Or in your case, your only heart.”
“Their true love?” Theora says, shooting me a confused look. “But I’m not a Darkling; my mom was a Lupine and my dad a human. So how can I be his Blood Mate?”
“I don’t know,” Lucinda says. “Maybe it’s because Edmund’s, like, a mixture of three things—Darkling, human and Lupine—so he can make the connection with any of those species? Or maybe you’ve got some Darkling DNA in you somewhere? I mean, it’s possible, right?” she adds when she sees the uncertain expression on Theora’s face. “If we trace our family trees back far enough, I’m sure we’ve all got a little bit of something in us, somewhere. So perhaps you’ve got a dormant Darkling gene in you, and it activated when you met Edmund?” Lucinda throws her hands up. “I don’t know. I’m just fourteen.”
“It’s possible,” Theora mutters. “I don’t know much about my father’s side of the family. He could have had a distant Darkling relative.”
“But if that’s true, how come you were born with a heartbeat and I wasn’t?” I say.
“She probably doesn’t have any Trypanosoma vampirum in her blood,” Lucinda says. I raise a confused brow. “Come on, you must know what they are! How do you think you’re alive?”
I shrug. Grandfather doesn’t know anything about Darkling physiology, and it’s not like I could ask anyone in town.
“They’re these teeny-tiny creatures that live in your blood,” Lucinda explains.
“Gross,” Kieran says, curling his lip.
She slaps his arm. “They feed oxygen to your organs, essentially doing the job for your heart, and as a result, it becomes dormant, as it’s not needed,” she continues. “But when you met Theora, it triggered the Blood Mate connection and zap! Hello, heartbeat.”
I look down at my hands, trying to picture these microscopic creatures wriggling about inside me. It is gross.
“So, what happens to these Trypanosoma vampirum thingies now that I’ve got a heartbeat?” I ask.
Lucinda shrugs. “I guess they become dormant, like your heart used to be.”
“This is twisted,” Ulrika mutters from her chair.
“Anyway, I doubt Theora has any Trypanosoma vampirum in her system,” Lucinda finishes. “If she does have any Darkling in her, which we don’t even know for sure, it’s far, far, far down her bloodline, so they’ve probably been bred out of her by now. That’s why she’s always had a heartbeat.” Lucinda looks at Theora. “So do you have mushy feelings for Edmund?”
